Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Regime change - attempt #2

After the first time that the Obama admin flipped out on Bibi (ie. the Ramat Shlomo zoning announcement), some trial balloons went out claiming that Obama's real goal was getting a change of the Israeli government (Might have been Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic).  Right after that was a weird, cooked, and soon debunked Haaretz poll claiming that most Israelis thought Obama was sympathetic to their interests.

It's that strange atmosphere that has returned now. Even though the IHH has apparently distributed pictures of  bloodied and bound IDF soldiers, the MSM seems to still be calling these people "peace activists".  It doesn't make sense that this can still be a major international incident (with calls for a UN investigation etc.) when it is so clear that the dead were part of a known extremist group and that they attacked and subdued lightly-armed soldiers.

Previously Obama tried to rally the Europeans and UN against Bibi for the Jlem building freeze.  So it doesn't seem like such a stretch that this international flipout on Bibi is a slightly more subtle attempt to prod Israelis into wanting to swap him for Tzipi Livni.  If this is correct, we can expect to see more of this extreme (and unjustified) criticism of him on an ongoing basis.

A Mearsheimer-ish weekend NYTimes article suggested that Israel is a strategic liability and the US might throw Israel under the bus if there isn't a "2-state solution" soon.  The effect of articles like that might be similar ie. to frighten supporters of Israel into dumping Bibi and avoiding international pariah-hood.

Of course,  Israelis might return to a more dovish gov't if they actually thought that the "peace process" would lead to peace.  But since Obama is trying not to mediate but rather to impose his "obvious" solution  - when the PA will not even agree to sit down in the same room as the Israelis - there is no way this is going to happen.

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